CHESTER — The Philadelphia Union are on the verge of history. It’s not what you want to get in the record books for, though.

Last Sunday marked an inauspicious anniversary: The one-year mark since the last penalty kick the Union converted in MLS, a 35-game span. It’s been more than 11 months since they were last awarded a spot kick. In minutes, the droughts stand at 3,175 and 2,827, respectively.

It’s a statistical oddity but not something the Union generally think about.

“It comes up every now and then,” said midfielder Danny Cruz, who was involved in the last two penalty kicks at the end of last season. “I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t, especially when you see on the stats page, it shows you pens for and all that. It’s kind of surprising, and I feel like I don’t ever put blame as far as if we’ve gotten goals taken away from us and things like that. But it’s hard to believe you go through a season without even being awarded one.”

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Cruz stepped to the spot Sept. 29, 2012, burying a penalty drawn by Antoine Hoppenot in the 65th minute of a 3-2 loss to Columbus. In the next-to-last game of 2012, Cruz was hauled down in the box against Sporting Kansas City. Thought Michael Farfan’s attempt was saved, Hoppenot put away the rebound in a match the Union lost, 2-1.

Since that decision, the Union haven’t been awarded a penalty kick. Should that futility persist for the final four games of the 2013 season, they would become only the fifth team in the last 14 seasons to manage such a feat. There was a four-year stretch from 2002-05 in which no MLS team was awarded fewer than two penalty kicks in a season.

No other team in MLS has drawn fewer than two penalty kicks this season, Columbus leading the way with nine. The Union are also the only team in the league without a goal from the spot this season.

The last two teams not to earn a penalty kick in a season — the 2012 Portland Timbers and 2011 Chivas USA — finished next-to-last in their conference. The 2000 Kansas City Wizards went on to win the MLS Cup despite not getting a penalty decision, while fittingly in 2006, FC Dallas won the Western Conference without the aid of a penalty only to be upset in the conference semifinals … on penalty kicks.

There doesn’t appear to be a correlation between the ability to win PKs and the ability to win games, though it probably wouldn’t hurt the Union, especially given their past performance. In 13 attempts in franchise history, Farfan’s flub against Kansas City was the only miss, and even that resulted in a goal.

Despite Union manager John Hackworth admitting that it certainly feels like a year since they’ve gotten a call inside the box, it’s something he often puts out of his mind.

“I don’t think about that, to be fair,” he said Wednesday at PPL Park. “I will say that in all fairness, it’s surprising that we haven’t had a call go our way. I certainly feel like we’ve had some opportunities, but it hasn’t been whistled yet. And right now, I always think as a coach that when you have some of those plays that go against you, they’re eventually going to come back, so we’ll see how that goes in the next four games. We’ll get one eventually, but at this point, we don’t put anything into whether we get one or whether we don’t. We just deal with it.”

The upside for the Union is that they’ve conceded only one penalty this year, albeit a costly one. Ray Gaddis was whistled for a clear handball in the box in stoppage time at Rio Tinto Stadium July 3, and Javier Morales converted to cost the Union points in a 2-2 draw.

But the Union have had at least that many clear-cut penalties not given, the most notable a blatant handball in stoppage time by Seattle defender Leo Gonzalez in a 2-2 draw at PPL Park May 4.

The haphazard nature of MLS officiating makes it difficult to translate the penalty-kick goose egg into conclusions about the Union’s attack. While they aren’t a team, for instance, that excels at running at defenders with possession, they are adept at serving in dangerous crosses that put defenders in awkward positions. It means that the penalty-free season is looked at more with hindsight than as something that can be remedied.

“Probably as coaches, when you’re looking back at game film and you think one should’ve been called, it’s like, ‘Wow I can’t believe it,’” Hackworth said. “But at the same time on the other side of it, there’s other calls that have been called for us and against us that have been interesting, as well.”

“There have been opportunities for it to be called,” Cruz said. “Now if we said the entire year there wasn’t one time it went down, then there might be some words.”

The Union have managed to mine a positive out of the situation, turning the lack of calls into another facet of the us-against-the-world philosophy, the “Philly tough” brand that the rough-and-tumble Cruz embodies more than anyone else.

The fact that the one-year-without-a-PK mark came two days after arguably the Union’s finest result of the season — a 1-0 upset win at Kansas City where few thought the Union would end a five-game winless streak — fits snuggly into the narrative.

“We feel like we’re kind of taking on everybody, and we’ve played that role pretty well I think,” Cruz said. “Nobody expected us to go to Kansas City and get a result. It’s funny because whether you play well or you don’t, the teams in this league that make the playoffs are the ones that can grind our results like that.”